


The Black Notebook

by HarkerX



Series: The Yellow Notebook [5]
Category: Hannibal (TV)
Genre: AU, Alpha Hannibal Lecter, Alpha/Omega, Anal Sex, Angst and Porn, Daddy Kink, Dom Hannibal Lecter, Dom/sub Undertones, Excessive Drinking, Hannibal is Hannibal, Hannibal is Not a Cannibal, M/M, Masturbation, Mating Cycles/In Heat, Not Canon Compliant, Omega Will Graham, References to Knotting, Sub Will Graham, Will is Will, no murder on the menu
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-10-02
Updated: 2018-10-02
Packaged: 2019-07-23 23:40:47
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 6,580
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/16169159
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/HarkerX/pseuds/HarkerX
Summary: Turns out there's another notebook.





	The Black Notebook

**Author's Note:**

> The Yellow Notebook is a series of independent stories, however they are chronological and do assume you have watched through S3 as although it is more or less AU, there may be spoilers (and references to characters/relationships). 
> 
> I don't even know about this one, if it works in the series, or if it's terrible? But I thought I'd post it anyway. Go insecure fanfic writer go! :D
> 
> Thank you as always for reading, the wonderful comments and kudos and I'm sorry about the comma use (and any other terrible grammar mistakes. This is not beta read and my eyes are going wonky from reading it over! It does get racy at the end)

Red string unravelled. Red twine. Birthday present bows. It’s how they floated to the surface, bloated and grey, their hands outstretched and reaching.

Fingers curled into fingers.

If Will doesn’t sleep, he can’t dream. If he doesn’t blink. If he stares at the wall, if the music is too loud, repeated, a loop, a note to cut through the noise, he hears nothing else.

A sharp enough memory does the same damage as a knife. Cuts just as deep.

If he opens his hands all he sees is blood, black in the moonlight.

Winston lets out a sigh. Will wipes at the patch of wet at his knee. There are four messages on his phone. There were eight. There were six. There were seven. He could have turned off the ringer, but he didn’t.

This is death. The dissolution of memories.It is closing time.

Will lifts the bottle. There was a bottle. There was a glass, there was a sip, now there’s a drop. It lands heavy on his tongue, his tongue is heavy behind his teeth.

There were pills and they are gone.

The phone rings again, a brutal flash of light in all the midnight dark and he touches it, answers it even though his hand is shaking. He sounds like someone else.

Like somewhere else, hazy and dream-sick but it’s been hours. Days. Two days, maybe. Three or more. Just this song and this whiskey and a rising, setting sun.

_“Will?”_

Silence. There’s a word, Will knows. There’s what he wants to say and what he should say. It’s one word. Two words. It’s like _I’m sorry_ , or _I miss you_ or _I love you_ or _please, help me_.

It’s _Hannibal_.

Two weeks ago Jack Crawford called and Will answered but this is not Jack on the phone.

_“Will?”_

“I’m here.”

Hannibal’s relief is obvious, the soft release of air an admission. Sigh, the murmur as if repeating Will’s name over and over again to make it true.

Winston lifts his head in a yawn. Will blinks back water, runs a hand through his sweat-slick hair. The blanket has too many holes.

_“Where are you?”_

Will didn’t go back to Baltimore. He was in Tucson, in a graveyard,up to his ass in water and then he came home to Wolf Trap, to his dogs, and it’s been this for the last four days. The floor, the music, the dogs and the whiskey. He hasn’t answered the phone. It’s been so long since he heard Hannibal’s voice that it too is a memory. A fragment. A piece of a photograph, torn in half.

He would keep the good half, the good parts, if he believed he deserved them. Murder makes victims out of everyone. He could close his eyes. He would still see.

Why is all the whiskey gone? 

Buster rolls over, lets out a sleepy dream-bark.

 _“That is your dog,”_ Hannibal says. _“Where are you?”_

“Home.” He doesn’t mean it the way it comes out but it’s the truth.

The twine was around their ankles, around rocks. Sunk to the bottom of the river. They were of no use to him anymore.

_“What do you need, Will?”_

It is the most kind thing Hannibal could ask. But still it hurts.

“Saving.” Will answers.

_“I’m on my way.”_

_#_

Will does not turn on the lights. He taps the empty bottle of whiskey into the floor and presses play again. The dark sends shadows and all of them have teeth. They nip at his ankles, circle his neck. He can’t breathe.

He has a key to Hannibal’s house.

Hannibal has no key to this house but the door is not locked and when the spring clicks and the door handle turns, Will draws his knees to his chest. Makes himself small.

Hannibal’s shadow fills up the whole of the room, his body the whole of the threshold.

“Will?”

“Here,” he says and Hannibal looks down.

Hannibal walks to where Will sits on the floor, tucked into the space between the wall and the fireplace, the corner. He goes down to his haunches and takes the bottle from Will’s hand.

“What do you need?”

 _Saving_ , Will had said but Will did not know what he meant. Knows exactly what he meant but wishes he had said anything else. “I’m drunk.”

“And listening to Chopin.” Hannibal wipes a thumb over his lower lip. “The sounds of dark and evening.”

“Sleep without sleep.”

“A never-ending night,” Hannibal touches the top of Will’s foot. “May I take you to bed?”

“If I sleep, I’ll dream.” Will stretches out his arm, knocking over the empty pill bottle.

“What did you take, Will?”

“I couldn’t,” he says and Hannibal reaches, opening his palm.

Will hands him the bottle. Hannibal turns it over once. Once again. Places it on the floor as if it’s precious, valuable.

Fragile. As if it’s Will.

Will is drunk but not so drunk not to see the sudden wash of sadness course over Hannibal’s face. How his eyes go dark. There is this: the careful way Hannibal composes himself. Tumblers fall into place and the door locks. The safe becomes impenetrable.

“We will talk of this in the morning,” Hannibal says, and then he’s over Will, lifting him. “We will talk about all of it.”

All of it.

Everything Will has done.

#

When Will wakes, Hannibal is still sleeping. The blanket tucked under his chin, his breathing long, soft. His leg over the arm of the chair. It is the most relaxed Will has ever seen him.

The air is salt.

Will’s mouth is sand.

There is a bucket beside the bed.

Empty. Then suddenly full.

If the noise Will makes throwing up the last of yesterday wakes up Hannibal, he can’t tell. When he looks at the man, his eyes are closed. He snores, softly.

#

Sunlight streams in, some semblance of warmth, casting a golden ray over Will’s bed, Hannibal’s face. Will wipes at his mouth.

The chair creaks, Hannibal swings his legs around, stretching. “Good morning.”

Will can’t help but notice the bucket is empty. Clean. There’s a damp wash cloth beside his pillow. “Morning.”

“I’d like you to shower,” Hannibal says. It’s clearly not a request.

“Okay,” Will says, and he crawls out of bed and goes down the hall.

#

Will doesn’t go back to the bedroom. Hannibal’s not in the bedroom. He’s in the kitchen. The kettle’s on and there are two pans on the stove already. All Will can smell is bacon. Coffee.

“Sit at the table,” Hannibal says.

There is this: Will asked to be saved. Hannibal won’t so much as look at him.

Will sits. There is water. Will drinks it down. “Please look at me.”

“If I do,” Hannibal says. “What will I see?”

“Me.” Will always assumed there would come a time when that answer would not be good enough. He thought it would be later. Years from now. Not while everything between them was still new, still shiny.

Hannibal turns a pan, flips the bacon. He cracks an egg. “Scrambled?”

“Please,” Will says.

They eat in silence.

 

#

Will does the dishes. Hannibal leaves him and goes to the porch. He doesn’t sit, just looks out over the vast nothing that makes up the place where Will has made a home, surveying the dying trees and their reaching, yearning branches. There is a silence here, an echoing emptiness. A place for wind, for the howling brutality of winter, the billowing of snow; the heavy, wet damp that piles in doorways and settles in window frames. Icicles that so easily become weapons.

Weather to block out the world.

It is easy to understand why Will has chosen to live here, in this place that is nothing but space, open and unforgiving. A castle with a moat few would care to cross.

Perhaps it is punishment. Prison.

There is a groan of wood, a tentative footstep. An equally tentative touch to his back. Hannibal closes his eyes. What he has never wanted is the space of this place to find its way between them.

And yet it has.

“Please talk to me.”

It is hurt and want. Hannibal turns around, leaning into the old, worn banister. Will shuffles backwards, his hands stuffed in his pockets and his hair in his eyes. There is little Hannibal is afraid of, but this. The look on Will’s face and the coiling anger in his own belly, the acidic bite of uncertainty.

He is always certain.

Save now.

“Please, Hannibal.”

“You ask me to speak and I have words, many of them are barbed, angled and sharp. I am already bleeding. If I, in turn, cut you open, which of us will be left to bandage the wounds we have made? Which one of us will be strong enough to walk away?”

“I don’t want to walk away.”

“You have already opened the door.”

Downed half a bottle of suppressants and ignored his calls.

Will should be in heat. Today. He should be beneath Hannibal. He should be marked. He should be taken, cared for. Worked. He should be asleep in the warmth of his Alpha. That is what Will has taken from him, the opportunity for him to be as he is. As they are. Should be.

“We can close it back up,” Will says. “We can lock it.”

“We can,” Hannibal murmurs. “But if we do, only one of us will be granted the key.”

“It won’t be me, will it?”

Hannibal shakes his head. “No, Will, not this time.”

Will presses his hand into his hair he slides down the white clapboard to the weakened floor.

His boy asked him for saving and right now, it looks like this: the space Will so desires, with all its honed edges, with its crafted, barbed-wire fence. A distance between them Hannibal could close, if Will wanted. If Hannibal wanted.

There is a low throb at his nape. His chest aches in an unfamiliar, needing way. Bleeding, Hannibal knows, offers a specific sort of release.

Even if it’s metaphorical.

Right now, he’d prefer it was not.

#

Quiet settles between them. A dried leaf rolls over the boards, tumbling between them. Neither have moved so much as an inch. Eventually Will lifts his head and looks at his Alpha. “Forgive me.”

“And what shall I forgive you for?”

Will is quiet a moment. The words he needs are knives in his throat. He swallows salt. Maybe tears. The wet of the ocean between them. “Running away.”

“From me?”

Phrased as a question but both of them know it’s a statement of fact. There is this: the tenuous connection they share, this oh-so-taught tight-rope and if everything is not perfectly in alignment one of them will fall.

One of them will get hurt.

Will expected it to be him, first. But it’s not. “I didn’t run from you,” he says, but it might not be the truth. “Myself. This. It was like I was standing on the edge of the cliff and it was either jump or run.”

“And here we are.” Hannibal taps a finger to the banister.

“I feel like I’m still falling,” Will whispers.

“When did you forget I would catch you?”

When. When they opened up the first body. When the cloying rot of watery, human soup filled the morgue, the autopsy room. When the tests came back. One beta, two omegas. When he noticed the injection sites and when he understood what the doctor was trying to do. When he breathed in his own scent and knew his heat was coming and knew he couldn’t…

couldn’t be nothing but a wild, desperate Omega unable function without an Alpha, someone who couldn’t be _enough_ just as he was. Strong enough, able enough. Capable enough to push back his own needs, his own biological desires. To be seen as something other than someone’s pet.

Hannibal’s boy. Expendable. Replaceable.

What had Freddie called him? _The brilliant behaviourist who belongs to Hannibal Lecter?_ If you belong to someone, they can do whatever they want with you. Of course, that’s at least part of the problem. He is running away. There’s a chance, he knows, that he will never get where he is going. Not without Hannibal.

Hannibal fidgets with the top button of his dress shirt. He’s not wearing a tie or waistcoat, and his dark grey sweater is a storm cloud mimicking the man’s expression, the churning of emotions so murky Will can’t read him at all.

“When,” Hannibal finally asks. “Did you start taking suppressants?”

At least it was recently. “When we got to Arizona. I took more when I realized I couldn’t leave this house. I was worried we’d be in the middle of it, that I’d be in Tucson and I’d have to deal with—” He sighs. “I couldn’t deal with not being in the same room as you, going through heat as I was going through dead bodies. They were Omegas. A Beta. Imperfect if you were set on creating Alphas. He genetically altered them, but they came out impure. Weak. They came out like me. I couldn’t deal with anyone looking at me the way they looked at those corpses.”

“Will.”

“He tied rocks to their ankles and drowned them in the river like a litter of unwanted kittens. How could I go through heat with that? Without you? I would have—”

“Called me. Returned my calls.”

“He was a surgeon.”

“I am not that monster, Will.”

“We are all monsters.”

At that, Hannibal steps forward, goes down to his haunches and wraps his arms around Will, holding him close. Cradles him as he strokes his hair. “What hurt you bring upon me. What damage you do to yourself.”

Will buries his face in the safe of Hannibal’s body. “I saw myself in them,” he whispers. “An easily discarded thing.”

Hannibal flexes the hand at Will’s nape. Reminder. Comfort. “I have no intention of letting you go, nor any plans to toss you out.”

Of course not. But Will has learned that his feelings around a subject don’t always match the truth of it. Hannibal leans back slightly, cupping Will’s cheek.

Will blinks back water. “I can see the threads that hold us together. How thin they are.”

“I see how strong they are,” Hannibal replies. “How tightly they are knotted.”

“I’m scared,” Will whispers.

Hannibal nods into his hair. Kisses his head. “It’s cold. Go back to the living room,” Hannibal says, releasing Will. “Wait for me there.”

“Hannibal.”

“Do as I say, Will.”

Will nods. Uncurls from his place on the porch.

Goes.

#

By the time Hannibal enters the house, mid-day has given way to afternoon, closer to dusk. It’s cold, but not quite winter. Will sits on the floor, in the space beside the fireplace, his hands clasped, elbows to his knees. He should have made a fire, but Hannibal told him to sit and wait.

The doorframe groans under Hannibal’s weight, the casual lean of his body. “You’re not in Tucson, Will. You’re here with me.”

If only that were true. If only the smell of death and rot was easy to wash away. 

“Tell me why you abandoned me.”

Will shakes his head. “I didn’t abandon—”

“You retreated. Ran away when you should have ran towards.” He pauses. “I should be your safe space.”

The space between Hannibal’s words offer no room for argument, even as he walks over, stands in front of Will. Closes the distance between them.

If only he would sit. Will doesn’t look up. He can’t. Instead he studies the joints in his fingers, the bitten ends of his nails. Leans into the side of the fireplace mantle. “Jack couldn’t see. I could see. They’d washed up on the beach. Discarded. Yesterday’s laundry, old clothes. The kind you throw away because you know you can’t mend the holes.”

Hannibal drops to his heels, runs gentle fingers over Will’s jaw, down and over his collarbone. “I will never discard you.”

One of the dogs walks through the room, nails click-clack-clacking. The fireplace is ash.

“Being with you makes me want things I don’t understand.”

“Or perhaps it is this - being with me has clarified just what you want. When you first came to me it was under the guise of not needing me, but wasn’t it also denial? A form of torture? To go through a heat without an Alpha, without mating or being mounted is not entirely pleasant.”

“How would you know?”

“Because I was there, Will.”

There is a loose thread, he picks at it. A hole in his jeans he only makes bigger. He can see his toes through his socks. He lifts his right foot, covers his left. Hannibal taps the side of his foot with his own and Will shifts, flattening both feet to the floor.

“You know that I would have come if you called me.”

“Yes.”

“And that is what you were afraid of.”

It’s not a question but Will nods anyway. He looks up into soft grey eyes, the gentle, curious face of his Alpha. Expects an expression that’s not there.

“Do you want me to leave?”

Does he? Everything tightens. His chest, his throat. His hands make fists and he shakes his head and can’t look at Hannibal.

“Then tell me what you need.”

 _Saving_. “Sit with me?”

Hannibal nods. Pulls a blanket from the arm of the sofa and drapes it over Will’s knees. He shifts, tucking himself in between Will and the fireplace, Will and the wall. Will pulls the blanket overs so it covers them both.

“Did you know Chopin before we met?”

“In theory.”

“What does it remind you of?”

“What you said. Night. Darkness. Dusk.” He taps a finger to his knee. “You.”

“I’d like you to tell me something,” Hannibal says.

Will cocks his head. “Something what?”

“Something you don’t want me to know.”

Some small request that is. “Jesus, Hannibal.”

“Whatever it is, it’s between us now. It’s in this room. It will help, if I know.”

“You won’t like it.”

“I’m well aware.” Hannibal pulls up the blanket. “But I’m asking anyway.”

There is a long minute. The ticking of a clock. A dog rolls over. Another drinks from its bowl.

“I was with him for a year, after.”

Hannibal clears his throat. The man asked for a secret and there it is. Hannibal asked for the truth and that is the truth.

“After you presented?”

Of course Hannibal doesn’t need details. Anything like a hint. There’s no such thing as twenty-questions because Hannibal knows Will and Will’s insides better than Will does. “Yeah.”

“You were sixteen, Will, that you chose to work through subsequent heats with Garrett Jacob Hobbs is understandable, given what I understand about the first time he mounted you.”

Understand. What Hannibal understands is what Will told him, that Will was so desperate to be fucked, to be mounted, to be knotted that he let Hobbs take him, and it was okay because at the time Hobbs hadn’t killed anyone. He was just the neighbour, some older man. But he wasn’t a stranger. He was easy to love. “You hate the scar he left on me.” Proof Will cared for another Alpha.

“I hate that it’s not mine, yes, but—” Hannibal sighs, steeples his fingers. “If I could have found you earlier, been the one to take you when you presented, been your only Alpha,” then he shakes his head. “We are here with each other because of our experiences. You have been with Hobbs, and you have been with other men and other women and yet here we are.”

“You asked to excise the scar he made, but I want to keep it. His scar. I like knowing it’s there. I like that reminder of him. I like that when I think about it I remember his hands on me and in me and I remember him knotting me, feeling stretched and full and understanding for the first time, for one brief impossible second, part of what being an Omega meant.”

“Perhaps that scar is a sort of memento mori, a reminder of your own nature. A reminder of something dead and your own mortality?” Hannibal smoothes the front of his sweater. “He is, after all, a murderer and you are very much alive.”

“He could have killed me.”

“He would not have killed you.”

Will blinks and blows a strand of his hair from his eyes. “He didn’t, I’m not sure he wasn’t going to.”

“Is that what you saw in the river? Not a random, discarded Omega, but a different future, one in which you were Hobb’s victim, and not the girl?”

Exactly that. “In which I was disposable. Alpha and Omega are puzzle pieces, I—” He rubs at his eyes. “After Hobbs, I just wanted anyone. Any Alpha, it didn’t matter as long as they had a dick and a knot.”

“I have been with my share of Omegas for similar reasons, Will.”

That tugs in the wrong places.

“Don’t be jealous,” Hannibal says. “I assure you, it paled in comparison.”

“Yeah, I’m such a catch.”

“Will.”

“I just, fuck. It’s been twenty years since I spoke to him and I still feel so betrayed by him. He killed that girl and I feel like he killed part of me, too.”

At that, Hannibal wraps a hand around Will’s knees and pulls him closer. “I will not hurt you.”

There is also this: a second secret, the one that makes Will’s gut roll over when Hannibal says _I will not hurt you_.

“Not even if I ask nicely?”

“Maybe even then,” Hannibal says. “I found your new notebook. I thought perhaps that was the secret between us.”

It is the secret. A secret. It’s Hobbs. Death and corpses. He hid the notebook between a book on ornithology and some latin text he couldn’t translate. “Did you read it?”

It’s a stupid question. Of course Hannibal read it. Hannibal’s boundaries differ from other people’s. From Will’s.

“You made notes in the Yellow notebook that you weren’t afraid for me to read. But in the Black, you put your secrets.”

“Not secrets.” In a shake of his head. “Things I couldn’t say out loud.”

“Not even to me?”

“Fear makes strangers of us all.”

“Are you truly afraid of me?”

Will’s afraid of what Hannibal would give him if Will only asked. Will’s afraid Hannibal will say no. “Sometimes. Myself. This.” He waves his hand in the direction of everything. “I don’t want to end up dead at the bottom of the river.”

“Literally or metaphorically?”

“Yes,” Will says. “I would have given Hobbs anything he asked.”

“And now you feel the same about me.”

“More, about you.”

“So you gave Hobbs a year and everything you believed of him was erased when he took that girl’s life.”

“Yeah.”

“And now there are a murdered Beta and Omega, sent to the river like so much trash. Some part of you believes that I think you are lesser, disposable. You make notes in a secret notebook that speaks of use and hurt, while being afraid that I will see you as something to be used and tossed aside. Do you remember the day I told you that if you treated yourself like a dog, you would sleep at the foot of my bed like a dog?”

Of course he does. “Yeah.”

“You were not pleased with me.”

“Or, I wasn’t pleased with myself.”

“For?”

“Making you angry. Being difficult. Disappointing you.”

“And?”

“And really wanting to sleep at the foot of your bed.”

“The notes in your book seem to indicate you might still want that.”

Will grunts, drops his forehead, hiding in the fold of his arms.

“Will. Look at me.”

Will doesn’t. Not really. But he lifts his head and glances at the ceiling.

“Do you still want that?”

“I want a lot of things.”

“Was the list you made complete?”

His point form debauchery. “For now.”

Hannibal smiles. “And right now, what do you want?”

“For a very large hole to appear.”

“A hole can take many forms. Falling can take many forms. Obliteration can be as simple as orgasm.”

“Orgasm with you is never simple.”

“Would you prefer it was?”

Hannibal read the notebook. It’s a rhetorical question but Will answers it anyway. “Not really.”

“What is the one thing I have requested of you. The one, non-negotiable thing?”

It’s a pop quiz, one he finally might pass. “That if I need release I come to you and if I need comfort I come to you.”

“Simple enough, yes?”

Impossible but Will understands what he is saying. “I’m sorry. You know I’m not good with—”

“People.”

“Yeah.”

“I only ask that you are good with me. If I ask you now, what you need, would you tell me? Release or comfort?”

Sometimes it’s not so simple. “Both.”

“Tell me how.”

“Hannibal.”

“Notebook,” Hannibal reminds him. “Tell me how.”

Will digs his chin into his shoulder. Drags his lower lip between his teeth. If he doesn’t answer he can’t say the wrong thing. If he doesn’t answer they can sit here forever. “Hold me,” he whispers. “Fuck me.”

“How?”

Fuck. “With your—” he flexes his fingers. “Hand.”

Hannibal nods. “Right here? In the bed, on the sofa? On the porch?”

“Here.”

With that, Hannibal taps Will and widens his legs. Will shifts, crawls over and settles himself between the man’s thighs. In return, Hannibal pulls the blanket over both of them. “Remove your pants.”

“We can’t just?” It’s not like Will hasn’t masturbated fully clothed before. It’s not like Hannibal hasn’t made him come fully clothed. Left a stain on the fabric.

“No. Now do as you’re told.”

Will leans back, working his button, zipper, he curls up his legs and in an awkward shift, pushes his pants down over the curve of his ass, then pulls them off at the ankle.

“Thank you,” Hannibal says.

Will leans back and Hannibal curls his left arm around Will’s chest, holding him close. “In the morning, if you behave, I will fuck you properly.”

“Mount me?”

“Yes. Just because you’re not in heat doesn’t mean we can’t fuck as if you are.” Hannibal lifts Will’s cock, palming him. “It will hurt more, of course, you’ll be raw and aching,” he flicks his thumb across Will’s slit and lightly kisses a spot behind Will’s ear. “Begging, even as I push my cock into your eager mouth.”

Will wriggles, squirms. Lifts his ass to push his cock into Hannibal’s fist. “I don’t know how to ask.” For what he wants. Needs.

“I will teach you,” Hannibal says, pulling him closer, cradling him as he tightens his hold on Will’s aching cock, stroking him softly, dragging his thumb along the ridge, just beneath the head. “But for now, every day at 10:45 in the morning you will call me and if I’m able, I will answer. We will speak or you will leave me a message. You will tell me what you want, and what you need. And I will aim to provide it.”

Will digs a foot into the floor. “What if I just really need to be fucked? What if I don’t want, or can’t wait to see you?”

“Your hand can be my hand.” He squeezes, pulling on Will’s cock, circling the head before cupping Will’s sack, feeling for slick as rubs a wet finger over Will’s hole. “Every time you work your fingers inside yourself, imagine it’s me. Opening you, readying you.” He pushes in. “If you need to be fucked, and I am otherwise indisposed, then I expect you to fuck yourself. I expect you to ride your hand as you have done so many times before.”

Will gasps. “Fuck.”

“Yes,” Hannibal says. “Lean forward slightly.”

Will does. It’s enough to lift him a half an inch from the floor, to give Hannibal space. Room for Hannibal to add a second finger, to massage Will’s own slick inside him.

“I can’t milk you like this,” Hannibal says. “Maybe tomorrow, when you wake.”

“Fuck, yes,” Will groans, twisting himself on Hannibal’s fingers.

Hannibal tightens the hold on Will’s chest. He nuzzles Will’s neck, biting softly. “I think you should come for Daddy.”

Will nods once. Rocks himself against Hannibal’s perfect fingers, rubbing his cock against the rough of Hannibal’s pants. Hannibal digs the heal of his hand into the space behind Will’s sack as he works his fingers, impaling his boy. Will shudders, grinding down, fucking himself on Hannibal’s hand and it’s sudden, a brightening. Will turns his head, latching his teeth into Hannibal’s upper arm as he comes, biting at Hannibal’s sweater, working his teeth deep into the meat of the man’s arm.

Hannibal grunts, snaps his hips as Will spills everywhere. Goes limp. Melts into Hannibal.

Hannibal makes some noise of approval, reaches up and strokes Will’s hair. “You are perfect.”

Will pants out an apology. “Your arm.”

“Was somewhat protected by the wool.”

“I’m sorry.”

“There is no need to apologize, my sweet boy.” He leans in, kissing Will softly. Tenderly. “If I am yours, are you not mine?”

Will nods.

“Then my body is as much yours as yours is mine.”

Will narrows his eyes and smiles. “You liked it.”

Hannibal laughs. “Ah, the part where you tried to fuck yourself on my fingers? The part where you worked your cock on my pant leg and then spilled so beautifully over my hand?”

“The part where I bit you.” As he nudges Hannibal with the tip of his nose.

Hannibal pushes his hair back. “I like you undone, Will, whatever form that takes.”

With that, Will leans back, curls up into his Alpha. “Can we stay here another day or two?” There are other things they need to talk about, like Wolf Trap and the dogs and this house and Hannibal’s house and there are other notes he made in the black notebook and maybe Hannibal didn’t actually read the whole thing.

Sometimes blessings are also curses.

#

Somehow, Hannibal manages to make them dinner. Fish in the freezer, dry pasta. Will would have stared at the fridge for an hour and then made toast, but Hannibal could make a gourmet meal out of Fruit Loops, Tang and day old scones. A tablespoon of peanut butter.

Will washes up. Lets the dogs out. Takes too long with them, walking them around the perimeter of the house until he’s cold, shivering.

When he gets back, Hannibal has started a fire, made tea. He’s standing in front of the fireplace, cradling his mug. Will comes up behind him, pressing a kiss to his spine.

“Are we in a place to begin anew?” Hannibal asks.

“If you still want me,” Will wraps his arms around Hannibal’s waist.

Hannibal goes to speak, and then quiets.

“What?” Will nudges his shoulder blade.

“Come to bed?”

#

They crawl under the covers. Will rests his head on Hannibal’s chest as Hannibal plays with the curl of Will’s hair. There is this: a lingering, uneasy quiet. The heavy weight of Hannibal. Of disappointment. Of Will and how he failed them both. It’s so much easier when Hannibal leaves him sticky notes. Simple orders for him to follow.

It’s Hannibal that speaks first.

“I don’t want you working for Jack.”

There is the matter of the notebook and a single sentence. A single note about guidance. Rules. Will is grown, he doesn’t need a father. He needs a safe place.

All walls are strong if the roof doesn’t fall.

If Will lifts his hands high enough, maybe he can touch the ceiling. Maybe he can stop it from collapsing.

“Is that a request or an order?”

“Yes,” Hannibal says. “If you need it to be.”

“You’re asking me to not do my job.”

“Your job had you how many bottles of whiskey down listening to Chopin in the dark.”

Even in this, Hannibal is kind. Hannibal’s kindness is sometimes made of sharp edges. This is why Will turns his head, studies a crack in the paint, a space not quite big enough for him to crawl through. He could still use that portable hole.

A place to hide.

“Will.”

“I don’t work for Jack and people die.”

“You work for Jack and you die.”

“And I am worth more than a stranger?”

“Yes,” Hannibal says.

Of course.He turns his head. “You’re biased.”

“The idea that I value your life over a stranger’s should not surprise you.”

“I don’t think we should leave it to a flip of a coin, or what side of the bed you wake up on.”

Hannibal tucks a hand beneath Will’s chin, circles his neck and squeezes softly. “You think I would put someone at risk, you at risk, depending on my mood?”

Does he? There is a hand on his neck. “Yeah, I do.”

Hannibal kisses his head. “There is no one more valuable to me than you.”

Will takes in air, Hannibal tightens his grip, Will swallows against the press of Hannibal’s palm. “I can’t choose myself.”

“But I can.” He digs a nail in.

Will groans softy, shifting under the blankets. He tilts his head back, lifting his chin. It’s more space. More pressure. Warmth in dark places.

“I will choose the best for you.”

Does he nod, or is it just the feel of Hannibal’s hand at his throat? Does he shift, rolling into his Alpha? Does he whisper

 _More_.

It is this: an answer to Hannibal’s question. Permission given. There is a line. A paragraph. A wish phrased as a want. Messy ink in the black notebook. Smudged by his hand. By his shaking, unsure hand.

He had hoped Hannibal wouldn’t find the book.

He knew Hannibal would find the book.

“Say yes, Will.”

“Yes,” Will says in a sigh as he circles Hannibal’s wrist with his fingers. As he pulls Hannibal in and more. Limiting air. All the blood goes down, flows and fills his cock and he turns, pressing into Hannibal.

There’s warmth between his legs. Some auto response to Hannibal’s touch and Hannibal’s own demand and what Will wants. Needs. Hannibal is the wall that will keep him from tumbling over the slippery, rocky edge

intowater

only Hannibal can save him from drowning.

“Stay still,” Hannibal says as he adjusts his grip. Changes the pressure. Moves so Will is on his back and Hannibal releases his boy and covers him, straddles him. “Take hold of your cock.”

This is the easy part. The part he’s good at. The part he never fights.

His cock feels good in his hand.

Hannibal lifts a knee, digs into Will’s own, widening him.

The movement repeated until Hannibal is between Will’s legs. He leans back, his fingers slipping into Will’s cleft, into the warm wet of him. “Are you ever not ready for me, Will?”

At that, he blushes, closes his eyes. Murmur of protest but the hand on his cock moves, a long, leisurely stroke. He is wet here, too. A silvered pearl drop of salt that Hannibal quickly licks away.

All he can do is moan. Arch.

Then Hannibal’s hand is flat to his chest. “Stay.”

He does. Blinks open his eyes and Hannibal is studying him. Deciding. Butterflies, black and fluttering turn over in his insides, flap their razor wings and his belly contracts as he covers his cock with his hand, an idle slip of his thumb, the tiniest bit of pressure.

A gasp escapes his throat and he turns his head as if trying to call it back, to still. Be silent. Hannibal leans over, nudging Will until Will turns his head.

There is his throat and Hannibal’s teeth, a gnawing, demanding press. Alpha marking his Omega and Will. Will writhes, trembling as Hannibal strokes between his cheeks, wetting his fingers with slick. He lifts his head, whispers.

“Pull up your legs and hold yourself open.”

Always. So often Will is hands and knees. Presented, mounted. Hannibal flicks his thumb over Will’s opening. He gasps and releases his cock, bringing his hands behind his knees to lift and widen and fuck if it was anyone but Hannibal, he would have refused. Begged for something else. Caused some kind of distraction but it’s not anyone else.

It’s the man he’s chosen. Forever bonded now and when Will considers that, when he thinks about that for more than a moment the entirety of his head goes to cotton and all the hairs on the back of his neck stand at attention and he can’t quite

breathe.

But now, this. Direction, followed. He holds himself up and open and the movement lifts his ass from the bed. Hannibal tilts, kisses his knee, scrapes day-old beard across his skin and Will nods even though there isn’t a question here.

Hannibal hasn’t asked him anything.

The older man adjusts his position. Shoulders under Will’s legs, to his calves, and then there’s the immediate press of his cock, the thick of it, and Will is so fucking wet and so fucking open and ready and

 _Yes_.

That is not the word that falls from his lips as Hannibal slides in. It’s all syllables, a messy grunt and urgent gasp, a tightening to hold. To trap.

“Breathe,” Hannibal says in a gentle rock, a glide that fills him. Expands him. Stretches him like fingers and hands and even like this, the head of Hannibal’s cock finds his gland, strokes him. Short. Slow. A pressing demand.

Will turns his head. Presses teeth into his own arm. Makes terrible and beautiful noises.

Hannibal grips Will’s leg and leans forward. Slides a hand up Will’s chest, over his collarbone to his neck again, over his Adam’s apple.

“Nnngg.” Will grunts and then Hannibal kisses his knee.

“Let me,” he says.

But he can’t grab Hannibal’s arm and keep himself open. So he tilts and arches again and presses his throat into his Daddy’s hand and it’s not hard enough to close his throat, to stop him from breathing it’s just

that much power.

The impossible reminder that Hannibal will protect him. Keep him safe and there is the cut of Hannibal’s nails as he thrusts, deeper, dragging his cock through Will, pressing in, shifting just enough that Will spasms once, twisting beneath Hannibal, working himself on his Alpha’s cock.

“More,” he begs. “God, fucking more.”

Occasionally, Hannibal does as he’s told.

He pummels into Will, a brutal and violet battering until Will is panting, screaming. Until he goes completely still as his body contracts and he comes, sending a ribbon of milky spend into Hannibal’s belly and Hannibal thrusts again, coming as his boy spasms around him.

Hannibal pulls out slowly. Adjusts Will, sets him back into the bed and rolls beside him. There is come on Will’s belly and Hannibal traces his fingers through it. Brings his fingers to Will’s mouth.

This is always how it ends. With Will’s spend on his lips. On his tongue. In his throat.

“Such a good boy,” Hannibal whispers.

“Just for you,” Will says, as he curls in.

“There is the matter of the foot of the bed,” Hannibal reminds him.

“Or the floor,” Will offers.

“You would look good, kneeling for me,” Hannibal says.

“And you would look beautiful,” Will replies.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 


End file.
